Why You Shouldn’t Live With Regrets

There are only three things I know for certain in my life: 1) I cannot, and will not, resist McDonalds’ French fries, 2) All I’ll ever need is good music, good food, and good friends, and 3) I am bound to make a ton of stupid mistakes.

On multiple occasions (practically on a daily basis), I think to myself “Wow, I should not have done/said/touched/eaten that.” Whether it be minor instances, such as embarrassing yourself in front of your crush, or larger mistakes that affect your relationships with people, life is full of accidents that we may wish hadn’t happened. Living with the mindset that these “regrettable” experiences were completely bad, though, only weighs us down.

Every mistake, every failed relationship, every act of poor judgement is a lesson. We cannot go throughout our lives with guilt from these experiences.

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend about our freshmen year of college, and I started to understand the cliche that “hindsight is 20-20.” As we laughed about some of our crazy times, we also thought about why we did the things we did and how we got hurt by some of the mistakes we made. Maybe I shouldn’t have kissed that guy, but at least now I know how much it sucks to be treated so badly. Even though I flubbed my big presentation, I still passed the class and I wasn’t so nervous during my next one.

I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. When you have your heart broken by a guy who uses you and then forgets you, you learn what you really want in a relationship. When you end up passed out in your friend’s bathroom, you learn the importance of counting your drinks and staying hydrated.

Once we accept that we are imperfect people and that our lives are going to be a constant collection of mistakes, we can learn to look back without being mournful of what we’ve done.